Book excerpt: This memoire amusingly relates the story of a family living through the shock of immigration and the struggles of the Great Depression. Mama defies convention in 1931 and goes to work in her husband's restaurant, the Austin Lunch.Located on Chicago's historic but seamy Near West Side, Papa's restaurant becomes an uncertain haven for their two children, Helen and Nicky. Ironically, the restaurant with its parade of assorted inner city characters becomes a proving ground for the children to observe the energy, integrity and courage of their hard working parents during the rough thirties and early forties.The book's authentic sense of time and place warmly records a personal slice of Twentieth Century history through the honest eyes of childhood.